The False Compass

摘要: The question answered in this chapter is, why does the world work in such an unexpected way? Why is it often easier to succeed without objectives? To expose the way that objectives hamper discovery, this chapter surveys scientific experiments, natural evolution, and technological innovation. The problem is that the precursors to a great achievement often do not resemble that achievement. However, pursuing objectives relies upon exactly there being a recognizable pattern of steps to the desired objective that pursuing objectives relies one. This disconnect between the structure of great accomplishments and how accomplishments are pursued leads to deception, when focusing too much on reaching an ambitious objective actually prevents its accomplishment. While deception implies that we cannot simply accomplish anything we desire through brute force, by examining how innovation actually happens …